Travel Accounts; SEA 4
Phnom Penh
06-17
So, we’ve had the first night in Siem Reap, and after establishing contact with my dear Steppie we found out we had 11 days before we really needed to be back here, so onwards we went. We booked a bus to Phnom Penh and got out of Siem Reap lickety split. For some reason the bus that takes 6 hours has zero breaks in between so captain bladder control had trouble after an hour or 5 making the last hour quite a challenge. The last hour was particularly slow and bumpy, I really shouldn’t have drank all that water. All I could hope for was that people wouldn’t laugh and throw things at the face I’d be making after every bump. When we finally got there we got swarmed by the ‘tuk-tuk sir?’ pokemon. This is literally worse than accidentally dropping a chip at the beach near some seagulls. As the bus rolled into Siem Reap I’d already been keeping track of where the hotel was so we knew it was really close but even five minutes of walking in this heat with direct sunlight and 20kgs of luggage each was too much. Also I had to pee, did I mention that I had to pee?
We indulged one of the Pokemon at the side of the road and haggled the price down to $2, probably still too much but when you get to $2 you can feel your conscience eating away at you, best not to go even lower than that.
Walking up the stairs to our room at the hostel, which was very wrongly named ‘#10 lakeside guesthouse’ as not a lake was in sight – maybe only number 1 through 9 actually get to be at the lake, who knows, we smelled something oddly familiar. We looked at each other in confusion because surely narcotics were as illegal in Cambodia as in the rest of south east Asia, yet here he was, the happiest little camper puffing on the herb. We unpacked and went downstairs to get something to drink and ask about an organized tour to the killing fields and prison S21. At our amazement there was another happy long haired heap of scruff working on a feel good stick as well as a large group of locals doing the same. Apparently the law is too busy busting tourists on motorbikes to be fussed with a bit of mellowing grass here and there. We had heard there was a night market worthwhile not too far from where we were staying so we checked that out, and ended the night with a couple of drinks. We were literally the only people at the hostel not partaking, or at least not partaking voluntarily, a light buzz not attributed to the Gin and Tonics seeped in through the cracks. With an odd grin on our faces we went to bed and had a solid night’s sleep.
06-18
Today we got up bright and early; a day of learning and emotional exhaustion was ahead of us. We had organized for a personal tuk-tuk service to take us to the killing fields and prison S21 on the same day. In hindsight I think this is really the best way to go about it because you really don’t want two days of full on horror stories from history. I do think however that afterwards it would have been wise to go to a pet shop and roll around in a puddle of kittens and puppies to heal the soul. It really was terrible, not in the way a Michael Bay movie is terrible but in the way genocide is terrible.
At the killing fields you’re offered audio tours, survivor’s stories as well as former guards’ account of how they set about systematically eradicating a certain group of people really give a horrifically accurate image of what had happened. No monument is a more striking testament as well as giving a visual aid to the sheer numbers that were put to death here than the bones Pagoda, Wat Thmey. As the tour takes you past this monument you get a grasp of what is inside; thousands of skulls, femurs, and arm bones all were found on the grounds surrounding this grizzly monument. As the tour progresses it makes a couple of stops at some notable sites, we started to notice small rags and bits of white rock around the walkway. The audio tour guide explains these are actually fragments of clothes and bone fragments from bodies having been buried all around us. The sheer amount of mass-graves as well as the visual evidence offered by the rags makes you stop in your tracks with disbelief. The Khmer Rouge killed one in four Cambodians during this awful time, entire families were wiped from the face of the earth in line with their saying; “If you want to get rid of a weed it must be taken out at the root”. This impressive tour took two hours and left me with a feeling of sedation as nothing made sense for a while, least of all the locals trying to capitalize on our feelings at that time. A little girl came up to us begging for some money in the saddest voice she could muster, followed with a sincere noise of frustration and annoyance when we declined. When you’re out of the parking lot you’re surrounded by shops selling western food and drinks, the apparent disregard for what is on display just 50 meters away is just as shocking as the exhibit itself.
We find our driver sleeping in a hammock near his tuk-tuk and ask to leave, next stop the S21 prison, where most of the people buried at Choeung Ek came from.
S21 used to be a school, now it resembles nothing even close to a place anyone, let alone children, would enjoy going to. The windows are modified to serve their new purpose, wood allows them to block out sunlight completely and steel bars as well as barbed wire take away any hope of ‘flying the coop’. Again an audio tour is offered, it has way more stops on it but I couldn’t bear to go through all of them, I just chose the most interesting ones from the booklet we were given. The guide takes you past old prison cells, physical evidence of hardships as well as torture the prisoners had to go through. The Khmer Rouge would apprehend people suspected of treason, collaboration with agencies such as the CIA, and innocents. The Khmer Rouge was, by self-proclamation, never wrong. It didn’t matter whether you’re innocent or guilty; you were held and tortured until you wrote a full confession of your crimes. One notable confession was that of Kerry Hamill; In his confession, Kerry stated that Colonel Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, a popular chain of fast-food restaurants, was one of his superiors. He used his family’s home telephone number as his CIA operative number and mentioned several family friends as supposed members of the CIA. The majority of S21’s estimated 20.000 victims were Cambodian but some foreigners were also imprisoned, they received the same treatment as anyone else there; torture and eventually death.
The chilling efficiency following a strict bureaucracy in this line of work makes you marvel at people’s capacity to distance them from the truth in pushing pencils and checking lists. All deaths were recorded and each execution accounted for, then lists of the deceased were checked against lists of inmates to make sure no one was missed or overlooked. After 90 minutes of enduring the truths about this place and imagining what the concrete walls had silently witnessed not even 40 years ago I had to sit down. I could feel my shoulders being crushed by the weight of what had passed here, I was thinking of having a stiff drink to numb my mind some, I decided against it out of respect for the many fallen here who had no hope of reprieve for their situation.
On our way back to the hostel we got caught in a rainstorm. At any point in time for as long as I can remember rain had been there when I felt down and was in need of some emotional relief. The immense amount of water pouring from the sky at the time seemed appropriate considering the tragedy that caused me to feel this way. By the time we got to the hostel we were soaking wet yet somehow the dark cloud that had been hovering my mind was washed away.
We changed our clothes and went for a walk, the rest of the day seemed insignificant, I guess we were both just tired.
06-19
This is where I get to tell you about a magical journey taking us by bus from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville. This is how it was supposed to go; pick up from hotel at 12:00, bus leaves at 12:30, arrive at Sihanoukville around 17:00. The following paragraph details how it actually happened, no exaggeration other than my usual healthy dose.
At 11:45 we were happily waiting for the pick-up, by 12:15 we started asking the hotel manager for some explanation as to why the tuk-tuk wasn’t here yet, he said he’d called. Around 12:30 the tuk-tuk showed up, at this point we were confused as we were told the bus was leaving at 12:30. When we arrived at the bus station, no explanation was offered just a gesture to sit down and wait for the bus to come. I asked a local sitting next to me what the deal was and he explained the bus would come and depart around 13:45. I don’t like waiting or making people wait, least of all without any explanation, I gotta say; this trip is already off to a bad start. I had a nice conversation with Seng Hong, he explained a few things about Cambodian people and their way of life, very interesting stuff. So at 13:50 the bus arrived and with much pointing and waving we were herded into it. The bus drove around Phnom Penh for a long time and without us noticing by 15:30 it hadn’t even left the city. We stopped by the side of Phnom Penh airport and were stationary for about 15 minutes, again without any explanation, before we too got off the bus and started asking questions. The bus had broken down and now we were waiting for a back-up bus to come and save us. It wasn’t until 16:00 that we finally continued our journey towards Sihanoukville. My laptop had used up all its energy and unlike me had gone into sleep mode; this means there’s nothing to but count trees to pass the time. We stop two more times before arriving at Sihanoukville, at each of the stops I catch up with Seng to see how he’s doing and learn more about Cambodian people. At 21:30 we got to Sihanoukville, by now we’re completely ticked off and exhausted. Some people that hadn’t been on the bus before came into the bus and started telling us and the other white people aboard to get off, that this was the stop for Sihanoukville. I looked over at Seng with my question mark face and he shook his head, after asking for an explanation he spoke with the tourist collector who in turn waved us over and got us to disembark. Our luggage had already been snatched off the bus and looking around we could only see motorbikes, a flock of Pokemon and a dimly lit truck stop. Another western guy got off the bus and started yelling at the Pokemon to put his bag back into the bus, we asked what was going on and he explained that the bus would go further into town, and not to get off the bus here. When we asked how he knew this he explained his Cambodian wife had warned him about this and had instructed him to make sure the bags were still on the bus. Following his example I waded through the sea of tuk-tuk Pokemon and got them to put our bags back on the bus. Seng later explained what they were trying to do; apparently they trick tourists to get off at fake-Sihanoukville and when they realize their mistake they are forced to take one of the tuk-tuks into town at ludicrous prices. He also offered to haggle/talk with the tuk-tuk Pokemon that were bound to be waiting for us at the actual bus station, Seng’s a pretty nice guy, the only thing is that he keeps coming back to advertising the resort at Koh Rong Samloem where he worked. Anyways, after agreeing to a price that wasn’t all bad and a 20-minute tuk-tuk ride we finally got to our hotel. We had decided on taking a nice hotel with a pool so we could wind down after the long bus trip, arriving 5 hours late at 22:00pm kind of scammed us out of those extra dollars spent there. We tried drowning our disappointment in some hotel food, though it wasn’t as bad as some of the food we’d had, it didn’t quite do the job.
06-20
We had deliberately booked a nice hotel, one with a pool and a great location; we thought it’d be nice to go for a swim right after we arrived. The late arrival combined with rains the next day totally scammed us out of the relaxing swim we were due. We looked up another place to stay, one that costs 1/6th of this hotel, packed up and moved. We stayed at a really nice little hostel ‘Mick & Craigs’, the location was great as it was about a 5 minute walk to the beach and right next to many different restaurants. So far; Cambodian weather has definitely been the worst, it’s been raining a lot, especially in the south. We went for a little stroll along the beach to check out the views and get rained on in a picturesque environment. Right as we got to the beach the rain really hit so we took shelter at a local pub. We hadn’t sat down or a pack of nail-doers and foot rubbers swarmed us, and before I knew it one of my fingers had been manicured. Appalled by the atrocious state of my nails and the amount of dead skin she could cut away she pointed my nails at Puck who then agreed, 5 seconds later I was right in the middle of a very judgmental manicure. Puck only wanted her feet done, the nail ladies being persuasive as they are, they roped her in for some extra work. There’s apparently a way of plucking hairs with string; they used this method for all of Pucks lower legs, you should be getting the ‘roped her in’ pun now.
So being a guy, I don’t know about the pains and aches of women, supposedly it hurts A LOT. Didn’t stop me from laughing and taking pictures.
After about an hour of looks, plucking, clipping, scrubbing and sighing, mostly at my sorry excuse for fingernails, we paid them $15 and they were off. I gotta say; having people groom you has its appeals, I could do without the scoffs and glares though, it’s not my fault I hardly take care of my nails. Well maybe some if it is, like maybe 17% of it is.
After the pampering, painful plucking, and funny comments against her boyfriend Puck seemed right as rain, though it might just have been the rain obscuring my view. We walked past some boat trip bookers and decided on the cheapest one where we booked a trip to Koh Rong Island for the next day.
After having lunch at a really cool place where they served all kinds of western delights I decided I needed some further grooming and went to get a haircut. The first shop we tried was promising; totally empty except for one woman who was halfway into a nap. I asked about the possibilities of getting a haircut and she made a phone call, I guess I was wrong in assuming she would be a hairdresser herself. She said it’d be $10 and ‘maybe’ we could come back at 18:00. Now I don’t know whether it was because I thought the practice of leaving one person to mind a shop specific to offering one service, and that person not being able to provide that service, was supremely stupid, or the fact that we’d have to come back 4 hours later, but I scoffed in disillusion and said ‘no thanks I’ll be taking my business elsewhere LOL’. I know, not really mature, also I coulda just laughed out loud, but this idiotic business plan deserved some cheeky Internet language.
About 100 meters further along the road to the beach we stopped at a two-man barbershop, they quickly jumped up, prepped the chair and parked my half-groomed ass there. They quoted the price; $3, I agreed and out came the razor and comb. I’d never got my hair cut by a man before so I was excited about this new experience. I half expected sports talk instead of the usual chatter as well as someone coming in to offer me a cigar and some scotch. None of that happened, it was even better; no small talk, just how long do you want this section, and a lot of buzzing with the razor. Literally no scissors came into play here, all of it done with machines, this at least felt very manly. I think it took him about 10 minutes to find that boyish charm in my face that comes with a crisp haircut that makes me look 10 years younger. I gave him $5 and told him he could keep the change, I know it’s almost twice what was quoted but still only half of what the first shop asked, I felt he deserved the tip.
Back at the hostel we organized for them to take care of our bags while we would leave for Koh Rong, the man behind the desk told us it wouldn’t be a problem and the security guard would just take the bag and the key to the room.
06-21
We had to get up at the crack of dawn to be on time for the boat; it was scheduled to leave at 7:30 and we were advised to be there at 7:00. We dropped our bags off at the reception where the promised security guard took them into the room beside it. He asked for $1 per bag to cover the cost, we declined. He asked why, we shifted burden of proof to his colleague who has said it was okay without naming a price. He agreed to go ask him and we could settle up when we got back. He handed us our deposit for the towels we decided not to steal and we were on our way. When we arrived at the boat place they said “oh Koh Rong, yeah yeah” while looking at our ticket and arbitrarily pointing towards some seats “wait there”. I asked when the boat was supposed to leave and he replied; “8 o’clock”.
“WHY ARE WE HERE AT 7 THEN??” I screamed internally. “ok” I quietly responded.
I really don’t know why but we keep doing this; they instruct us to be somewhere at a certain time, we make sure to be there 15 minutes before that time. The scheduled departure time is NEVER met; in fact we always leave about 10-20 minutes later than planned. We really should adjust to SEA-time and just rock up 5 minutes before departure time.
We walked back towards the street and had some breakfast at an ‘authentic French boulangerie’. It wasn’t.
The breakfast was allright, the coffee was overpriced and so-so at best, we grabbed our bags and left for the boat at about 7:55, we were waiting for another 20 minutes at the pier before the slow-boat finally arrived. The journey on this boat itself wasn’t half bad; it took about 2,5 hours but the fresh sea air is always good for the soul.
When we got to the island we asked the trip manager for the one-day trip about 40% of people there had booked, if we had arrived at Koh Rong and if our hotel was far from the pier where we’d arrive. She said it was, and about 10 minutes on foot. Brimming with confidence we got off the boat, walked briskly towards what seemed to be luxury bungalows and a secluded beach.
I expected a sign to be there saying ‘Koh Rong centre →’ or something, but none of the sort, not even a clear road or pathway was present. We made our way through the mesh of bungalows and vines and arrived at the far end of the beach where most restaurants seemed to be located. From there it was indeed about 10 minutes to our hotel, took us about 15 to find it tough.
The hotel was really nice, it was one of the newer ones at Koh Rong and as it had just opened two weeks ago, there would be an opening party tonight, lucky lucky.
After speaking with some of the other guests and rolling around in the pool of kittens that is always outside, we learned that you could take a tour for $10 per person. The tour takes you snorkeling, swimming, offers barbeque, drinks and at night they take you to where the luminescent plankton is. Great deal we thought, booked it, and at 13:00 we were off!
The tour was quite alright, the value for money is really what makes it worth while; you’re offered free grabs at all the beer you can drink (I’m getting my money’s worth on that alone), and they take you out for an entire day. The snorkeling wasn’t good at all though; we stopped at a shallow rocky area with loads of coral. I wasn’t quite sure weather I could stand, I kicked down and the coral that my foot brought back up was proof that indeed I could, but shouldn’t stand. I got back onto the boat and pulled the coral shrapnel out of my foot, one of which was about 1,5-2 cm long. It hurt. It bled. I need more beer.
This whole coral ordeal would prove to be more of a nuisance than I could imagine, apparently coral wounds get infected real easy and take a long time to completely heal. After checking in with a local pharmacy that was run by a doctor, medical not a real one, she helped clean the wound by scraping and needling around in it, more coral came out. I was told to keep it clean, to at look after the infection and to swab it with alcohol at least twice daily. It would take a full month for it to fully heal.
The boat took us to a couple of beaches where we could swim and loiter, we spent some time fishing; as we were doing this we learned that we were not just fishing to pass the time, we were catching lunch. The fish were only marginally larger than guppies and most people on board felt bad about taking them out. The boatman insisted, “they are not small, they’re Asian”, as funny as the comment was, it didn’t help us feel hungry when looking at these baby fish. Most of the people were chucking the fish back into the water after catching them; to this aberrant behavior the boatman said, “if you keep doing that, you’re going to be hungry.
At about 15:30 we’d seen all that we could see and done all we could do, we were now really cold and ready to head home, the plankton wasn’t going to happen till it was fully dark, and this happens at about 20:00. One girl rallied the travelers on this tour and we decided to go back early as all of us were really cold. When we finally got all our ducks in a row we noticed we were 3 people short. We couldn’t leave if we wanted to.
I’ll spare you the agonizing description of shivering, quivering, cursing and overall complaining about the cold.
At 19:00 it started to get dark, by 20:00 it was pitch black and we all hopped into the water. My god this is SO worth it, the plankton experience is like flying amongst fireflies, your every movements are outlined by glowing lights and even though it’s pitch black out, you can very well make out your feet below you.
We made some friends on this tour, had some drinks with them at the party later on and exchanged Facebook profiles to ensure a meeting later on in the trip.
06-22
Thinking about where the days went when writing ‘22’ I figured I should check my booking history. It’s actually the 25th now. I don’t know what went wrong here or where the extra days went. I’m sure they were about the same as the above mentioned days; rainy, beachy, explore-y, but to avoid further confusion I’ll just write from the 26th.
06-26
We were lucky enough to escape the steady rains that had been tormenting our sightseeing expeditions of late for the remainder of our stay at Koh Rong. The morning we left it started raining again but so long as we were on the island the sun was out. We were lucky enough to find some good weather on this small island as without it we would’ve had a pretty bad time. So we spent all day lounging at the beach, enjoying the nice weather, having nice food and some happy-hour 2 for 1s.
27-06
As I said today spelled the end of the nice weather, it rained and the sky was filled with grey, gloomy clouds. We were happy to go back to the mainland. Us being organized and well mannered we arrived bright and early at the docks. The boat was scheduled to leave at 10:00 and we were there at 9:30. All for nothing as it turned out because we got the usual malarkey that we had to wait for ‘five minutes’. An hour and a half later we were waved over towards the boat.
We paid an extra $5 per person to get the speedboat as it would take less than an hour to get to shore, arrive at the dock 500m away from our hostel and would generally be more comfortable.
This boat was over 90 minutes late, no seating was available to us so we had to stand, and it broke down about 2k’s out of the bay. It ended up arriving about the same time the slowboat would’ve. We were getting annoyed and used each other to bounce insults off of about the people around us as we were walking. I was telling puck about the girl that was vom- ,“Tuk-Tuk sir? –no thanks, -iting over and over again and Puck was on about how we could’ve taken the slow-, “Taxi? –no thanks, -boat. All the while every local present and their mother urged us to buy just about anything including at one time their baby. We got back to the hostel, checked out our bags from their locker room, didn’t bother asking about the payment the guy asked for when we checked them in, they didn’t either. Score. I later found out there was actually a note stating that he was right in charging us, double score.
At a restaurant not to far from the hostel was a nice bar where you could test your wits and see if you had the stamina and constitution to battle the big burger. This burger was literally called “Man v Burger” it consists of: 2 burgers, cheese, bacon strips, jalapeños, a fried egg, hash browns, union rings, lettuce, onion and tomatoes.
Apart from this formidable opponent we saw another item on the menu we liked; the nachos. We looked at each other, fire in our eyes, and a mischievous grin on our face, and before we knew it we had waved the waiter over. We stated our order and waved all objections he offered aside; “Just bring it out and we’ll see!”
The burger came, it fought hard, truly did its best but in the end. I OVERCAME. I threw my opponent down into the chasms of my stomach one bite at a time. I was ravenous, relentless, nothing he threw at me could stop me. I didn’t stop, I couldn’t, afraid if I gave him air, if I took pause, he’d overcome me. The onion ring on top threw me off for a second, but even that couldn’t prevent his eventual demise. Washed down with a gin&tonic the burger was soon gone from this world. After retrieving the empty plates, seeing their champion utterly defeated and gone from the table, the waiter admitted to be impressed, victory was absolute, and mine.
With our bellies full and slightly upset over the vast amount of slob we had forced into it, we went home for a good nights sleep. Tomorrow we’d have a long day.